Numbers and Narratives
The world of financial data is a mystery. As individuals we have not been educated on the basics of the finance industry and what it entails. Today on the tune in with us on our first episode of Numbers and Narratives as we learn about the complex and fascinating world of finance. Today we have guest and expert financial data analyst Daniel Radi to teach us the ins and outs of the industry and how it all began for him. Today we will learn about what Radi did to get to where he is today and what he does as his role in the industry as a financial data analyst.
Listen here:
Amina Rodriguez: Hi, how are you today? My name is Amina Rodriguez, and today I’m here with Daniel Radi, a finance analyst, and we’re going to ask him some questions today. How are you ready?
Daniel Radi: I’m doing very well, thank you. How are you?
Amina Rodriguez: Good. Tell us a little bit about yourself, where you went to school, how old you are, where you’re from, and how you came to be in this profession.
Daniel Radi: I was born in Colombia, in Barranquilla. I moved here to the States when I was about eight years old. I went to Florida International University. I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do, but throughout my college experience, I switched my majors about 2 to 3 times I did, joining a bunch of different clubs in school to see where I’d ultimately fit.
Daniel Radi: And there’s this one club called the Phoenician Investment Fund. The Phoenician Investment Fund is a student run finance club that basically teaches students about each and every topic in Wall Street. So think about sales and trading. Think about investment banking, wealth management, asset management, corporate finance. And out of those, you know, on Mondays and Fridays. And like I mentioned, it’s student run.
Daniel Radi: So students are always teaching the classes. There’s no teacher, there is one advisor, but all of this just goes to show that you have to be motivated and have the initiative to want to go and teach, to learn, to be put in front of a class that could potentially question you on some of the things that you may say and if they’re factual or not.
Daniel Radi: So, you know, that’s where I guess I initiated my love for finance. Since then, I did five internships in college. It was, I guess two in corporate finance, one in asset management, one in wealth management, and then one in investment banking. I think internships are great because, like I said, they give you a little bit of a taste of what shoes you’d be filling in and what your role could potentially look like down the line.
Daniel Radi: After that fifth internship, I finally did figure out that investment banking is something that I wanted to get into more, more specifically like restructuring. I did earn my full time after the internship and then post internship. I’ve been there ever since. I’ve been a well, I started like an intern then an analyst, now an associate. I’ve been here for about four and a half years and know can’t love it more.
Amina Rodriguez: And that’s great. Thank you. I’m going to go a little bit and go ahead and ask you a little bit more in depth. Can you provide an overview of what a financial data analyst entails and the significance and decision making within the financial sector?
Daniel Radi: Absolutely. So like I mentioned, the company name that I work at is province. What I do at province is or what province does is we are a financial advisor for companies that file for bankruptcy. Now, we don’t help the company. We help the investors who are owed money. All we do is in short, we help the investor get a recovery on their loans.
Daniel Radi: So what does that entail? A company filed for bankruptcy, and when companies file for bankruptcy, it’s mostly in court. So they usually go to, you know, any jurisdiction. For example, it would be either New York or Delaware or recently Florida or Southern District of Texas or another. What we do is we analyze what we call liquidation analysis.
Daniel Radi: Right. Which is what does what assets does this company have, what outstanding litigation does it have is there any potential ways that we can claw back any sort of value, which is what we like to call money? Because all in all, what we’re trying to do is siphon some money value into a big board, then distribute pro-rated to our clients the creditors.
Daniel Radi: So I guess to break this down into three pieces, where can we what data do I analyze it I’ll go with. Let’s start with the financial statements, the income statement, the balance sheet, the cash flow statement. Those three things will help you paint a picture of the company’s financial ability to perform how much cash it makes a snapshot picture of the company at a certain point in time rather than within the past six months or a year.
Daniel Radi: You know, it’s just right there. And then today, what is the company look like? So try to liquidate any assets. Where can we try to find value? Is there any sort of litigation? I guess an executive does something that, you know, derails. We can go after that, you know, insurance and get some sort of pockets of other ways of finding value could definitely be like do comparable analysis, comparable analysis is where you try to find similar companies of the similar size within the same industry and trying to and obviously these companies have to be public for you, then you to get some sort of multiple to then apply to your own company and then kind
Daniel Radi: of give that company a valuation to see how much the assets are actually worth versus what the financial statement is saying.
Amina Rodriguez: Okay, thank you for that. I feel like I definitely didn’t know that. Another question, What are the primary data sources, financial analysts typically work with and how do you ensure the accuracy and reliability of the data collected.
Daniel Radi: Differs per company and per analysis? So, for example, if we are trying to figure out how much a company may be worth, Eazy of the company’s public, we can go into Capital IQ or we can go into the SEC filings, which all of these are public companies. So they have the public publicize their financials because there’s investors out in the public stock market who are investing in this company and would require financial data and update so they can do their own analysis to see if this is actually something that they want to invest in.
Daniel Radi: Public filings. And all of these filings do have to get approved by an auditor. There’s anything wrong or they have to all the company has to do is point at the auditors and, you know, they’ll take the blame for it. But these auditors have been doing this for years and years and years. So obviously, if there’s, you know, a lot of mistakes that happen, they have a bad reputation and it’s not something that companies will want to continue doing business.
Amina Rodriguez: What are the essential skills and tools that a successful financial data analyst should possess in today’s dynamic business environment?
Daniel Radi: Behavioral. I’d like someone that has a good attitude, right? Someone that’s willing to work even late nights or over the weekend. Now, technicals would be learn your financial modeling so it could be like DCF, comparable comps analysis or president transactions. And to have all of your Microsoft Office products pretty down to be more efficient.
Amina Rodriguez: How has technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning transformed the field of financial data analysis? And what opportunities or challenges does this present?
Daniel Radi: Good old chat, good team. It can help you not just write emails or, you know, properly write emails. It can help you clean up commentary, It can help you rewrite or summarize big paragraphs of text and all of these public filings that we work with are written by lawyers. Lawyers do not write public filings in a very succinct and easy to read manner.
Daniel Radi: And another one that I use a lot is actually Otter AI. I will join a call with you and will record the call while recording. It has a live transcript. So it has, you know, the bot in the background writing out everyone or everyone saying, So you don’t need that point person to take notes to summarize it at the end, it’s super cool because once it finishes, you can also just kind of put, you know, some of the speakers names for the first few and then afterwards it automates it by itself and it kind of continues to learn whose voices are who.
Daniel Radi: So in the follow ups, you don’t have to put those speakers names. It has a little chat agent box on the right hand side that can you say, give me a list of all the follow up items and it can list them out from, you know, that one hour call that you had that someone has to go back in and reclaim those notes and summarize everything.
Daniel Radi: Right? So I guess that’s one of the challenges that we can only use it internally for now.
Amina Rodriguez: Okay. I’m I also wanted to ask you, now that we’re coming up short in time for those looking to pursue a career in financial data analysis, what advice would you give in terms of education, skills development and staying abreast of the industry changes?
Daniel Radi: It’s good to set timelines. It’s good to get to set deadlines and then act on it. Don’t get too comfortable. I think it’s very important to have different friend groups. The people who I spoke with the most towards the latter part of my career and I guess like my internships and when I started actually thriving into professional career and where I wanted to be, it was the finance organization.
Daniel Radi: It just gave me a better view of what I could achieve.
Amina Rodriguez: Yeah, you were just hanging out with a group of likeminded individuals that were reaching for a similar goal as you were. And I guess in that way you guys can teach and learn from each other. Used to say you gave not only apply to you like as a finance analyst, but also just in life in general.
Daniel Radi: Absolutely.
Amina Rodriguez: Okay. I just wanted to tell you, thank you so much for your time and everything that you were able to share from your experiences as well, as well as things are you doing your job and the skills that you have?
Daniel Radi: Absolutely. My pleasure. Once again. Thank you again, I appreciate the time bye.
Amina Rodriguez: No, thank you for sharing and thank you for your experiences as well.
